Online service providers offer services over the internet to customers that do not wish to invest capital in information technology (IT) equipment of their own. Such service providers reduce costs by using leverage effects at the service provider side and also make the customers' IT more flexible to their unique business circumstances. Service providers relieve the customer from keeping local data stores, having backup and maintenance issues, and having extensive IT staffing costs. Service providers can be combined with a data center based infrastructure that collects and analyzes data and creates reports for the customer's IT department.